The Pretender

by Mary Morrissy

  My princess, Clara murmurs, my princess.

  Nurse Walz, running in the opposite direction, sees Clara Peuthert’s lurching progress from afar. She’s been alerted, not by Clara’s shrieks, but by the eerie silence she has left in her wake. Outburts and rages are the norm, but silence means real trouble.

  ‘What is it, Clara? What’s happened?’ she calls with yards of sun-striped floor still between them.

  Clara’s face is strangely illuminated, softened, positively beatific.

  The two women draw level with one another.

  ‘Clara?’

  Clara staggers by, saying nothing. She seems not to even see Nurse Walz. She points silently towards Ward B. Nurse Walz hurries on. The patients in Ward B are where Clara has left them, a frozen tableau. Hilda stands sentry at the end of Fräulein Unbekannt’s bed, Minna Heck is stranded in the middle of the floor, Hanna is crouched, cross-eyed, on her bed.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ Nurse Walz demands.

  Hilda thrusts a newspaper into her hand and points in dumb show at the Fräulein.

  ‘It’s her,’ she whispers, ‘don’t you see the likeness?’

  Nurse Walz has already seen the portrait. Thea Malinovsky showed it to her one evening and asked her cryptically if the young woman, second from the left in the picture, reminded her of anyone. Nurse Walz does not like riddles.

  ‘No,’ she had said impatiently.

  ‘The Fräulein,’ Thea had ventured, ‘can’t you see? Wouldn’t it make sense?’ Thea had gabbled. ‘Her silence, her refusal to work, those scars?’

  Thea had been too long on the night shift, she thought.

  Nurse Walz takes the paper now from Hilda and pushes it into Fräulein Unbekannt’s lap. Has the entire world lost its senses?

  ‘Fräulein,’ she barks, ‘explain this!’

  The Fräulein looks straight at her, straight through her.

  ‘Not Fräulein,’ she replies, ‘Anastasia.’

  It was as if I had fallen from the sky, a clear blue sky and found myself suddenly among strangers. They hid me in their wagon. Have you ever seen a farm cart? No, I don’t suppose you have. But I have. I know how these wretched people live. With their rough-hewn clothes, their poor black bread, and their pitiful belongings. I was lying in a nest of straw; it smelt of milk and rottenness. A man was driving the horses. Alexander, Alexander Tchaikovsky, the man who saved me. He drove the horses like a man possessed. His family huddled together in the well of the cart for warmth. His mother, his sister Veronica, his brother Sergei. I drew warmth from them too. It is a shameful thing to admit. I bedded down with subjects who once would not have dared look me in the eye. Alexander was a soldier, he had guarded us, though I did not remember him. They all looked the same to me, these people. He saw that I was alive and he would not bury a live body. He would have been damned for ever if he had. So he took me away, I don’t know how. I can’t remember. After the smoke and the blood, I was in darkness for a long time.

  When I awoke I was wearing clothes, not my own, peasant clothes which smelled of woodsmoke, as if I had been smuggled into another life, a wretched, hunted existence. We journeyed, oh, for weeks and weeks like animals in the night. Bucharest, they said, Bucharest would be safe. It is all a blur, all dirt. Dark woods and fields. A cold starry sky overhead. The nights were bitter. The cart rattled dreadfully. Each bump on the rutted track was like a twist of the knife. My smashed head ached and sometimes there was only water to drink. Sometimes, no food at all. They tended to my wounds with cold compresses. That is all they had. But they shared what they had with me. I would not be here now if they had not been kind to me. A peasant, you see, is not the same as us, but if simple people are kind to me I do not remember at all that they are simple. Alexander was rough, yes, but he had come from nobility, way back. His grandmother had been a Polish countess, yes, he told me that. But he was like all men: he was hot. By the time we reached Bucharest I was with child. Frau Tchaikovsky, that should be my title now. Oh yes, I married him. Not for me, for the baby’s sake. There was a ceremony in Bucharest in a large church, a Catholic church. It was the only time I came out of hiding. I never went out into the street. It was too dangerous, full of brigands and thieves. I stayed indoors, in one room that we all shared. High up. Alexander strung a rope from wall to wall and draped a blanket over it to afford us some privacy. Trees scraped up against the windows. I could hear the sounds of other people. It was a cauldron of noise, that place. Roars and shrieks in the night, the poor and their noisy, common rows. And when the baby was born, he was christened. We called him Alexei, after Baby. As soon as he was born I gave the child to Alexander’s mother to look after. I wanted only that he would be taken away. Instantly. I was ashamed. I had betrayed my name with a bastard son. Dirt was all he was, more dirt.

  They took the jewels they’d found in the seams of my corset and sold them. Sold them so that we could eat. There were diamonds, amber, I don’t remember; we had sewn them in willy-nilly. The last to go was a long pearl necklace. They killed Alexander for it, stabbed him right through the heart and robbed him. Rumanians are quick with the knife. They had killed him for Romanov gold. I saw his body, what they had done to him. The blood, all blood. Because of me. I might as well have killed him with my own hand. I bring death to all who know me.

  It was winter then. I had to get away. Berlin was the only place where I would be safe. I have family here, Aunt Irina, she would help. Alexander’s mother did not want me to leave but I had to. They had been kind to me but I couldn’t live as a peasant all my life. Sergei came with me. He was a sweet boy, sweeter than my Alexander. There was something sad and solitary about him, like a child in a great big lumbering body. We had to walk for many miles, through snow, hiding by night. Sometimes we would go on a train, but we had no papers. In any case, there would have been questions. We had to be careful. As soon as we reached Berlin, we found a small hotel. I was exhausted; you cannot imagine how tired I was, how weak. I had been so reduced. When I awoke I was alone. Sergei was gone. I waited for days for him. I searched the streets, wandering like some lost soul. First Alexander, now Sergei. He had been like a brother to me, a faithful brother. Perhaps he had been set upon as Alexander had. There are assassins everywhere. Perhaps because of me, he too was dead. I tortured myself with such thoughts. All alone in a strange city, penniless and friendless, no one to turn to. I ended up at the canal. A weakness overcame me, a terrible despair. All belonging to me dead or gone. Mama, Papa, my sisters, my beloved Baby. Gone. How can I explain? The waters of the Landwehr Canal promised rest. It’s true. I wanted only to be dead. And I was saved. Again.

  SHE HAS BEEN given a new name – Fräulein Anni – and a new prison, this time on Nettelbeckstraβe. Six months after Clara’s departure from Dalldorf, Baron Arthur von Kleist had offered to take her in. Dalldorf, he declared, was no place for a grand duchess. The Baroness Maria had taken her on drives to Potsdam and Charlottenburg. They had viewed palaces and museums which the baroness had presented with a proprietorial flourish. This, she would say, pointing to a glacial lake of polished ballroom floor, or the marble sweep of a staircase, will remind you of home. They reminded her of Dalldorf, sugary, iced-cake versions of Dalldorf.

  She had been given new dresses to wear. They even had monogrammed knickers made up for her with the initials AR, but she felt too foolish wearing them. Gerda, the baron’s daughter, would spend the night on a settle bed in her room in case she should wake up and not know where she was. The hush in the apartment on Nettelbeckstraβe unnerved her; there were no night-time noises here. Everything was soft and muffled – the beds, the sheets, the heavy drapes which plunged her room into a velvet darkness. And then, the questions started, all over again. Not the same ones – who are you? where are your papers? – but sly and unexpected questions as if she were being tested. When she complained of headaches, a doctor was called. She should have known better. What age was she? Had she suffered a blow to the head? What about those s
cars? There followed a procession of guests, sometimes as many as twenty at a time in the drawing room, a Captain Double-Barrel or a Countess Buxombosom, who would stand and gawp at her or sidle up to her with more queries. Would she speak Russian for them? As if she was some circus dog. At least in Dalldorf she had known who to be afraid of – the doctors wore white coats, the nurses, uniforms. Here a visitor in street clothes could turn in the blink of an eye into an inquisitor. She took to her bed, where sometimes it was possible to spend an hour or two alone, though the baroness hovered constantly. ‘For fear of what you might do to yourself,’ she said.

  She wept at night. Lonely, solitary tears so that she would not excite the attention of Gerda, snoring decorously at her feet. She could not tell what she was weeping for. Perhaps it was the little princess whom she had housed within, a little girl in need of mothering. And the loss of Clara. She would wake up in the small hours of the morning – the silence woke her – and cosseted in her high bed she would long for Clara. Without Clara, none of this would have happened, and yet where was she? Her newfound status had turned Clara into an unsuitable companion, as the baroness had put it.

  It was surprisingly easy to escape. Easier than she had thought. She simply said she was going for a stroll, to take the air. Gerda offered to come with her, but she declined. Gerda was getting on her nerves, in any case. She had found herself snapping at Gerda and, surprisingly, Gerda took it. Where such behaviour would have won swift retribution at Dalldorf, here it was tolerated, even admired. As if this was what the von Kleists expected of royalty – bad temper, disdain. But Gerda’s watchfulness was a kind of weapon. Her eyes darted about suspiciously, registering everything with a greedy disapproval. She was particularly vigilant when her father was about. What a pair they made – the baron, tall and stringy as a beanpole with leathery jowls, and his daughter, broad-faced, smooth-browed, small and plump. When the baron made the introductions he always used her title; with Gerda she was just plain Fräulein Anni.

  Out in the streets of Berlin, the merry song of trams lifts her spirits. If they will not allow Clara Peuthert to call, then she will visit Clara. It is the only other place in Berlin she knows, though certain street corners in passing beg to be recognised. A glimpse of cobble, a tram-tracked square, the spire of a cathedral, all seen from the baroness’s motor, have struck a chord with her, but the connection is so glancing that she has not remarked on it. These are echoes that belong to her, only her.

  Clara’s place on Schumannstraße is a far cry from the featherdown comforts of the von Kleists’, but Fräulein Anni likes it there. Its chaos seems eerily familiar, the gloomy scullery, the small, dishevelled parlour where Clara sleeps on a divan, the strange clutter she gathers all about her. The rumpled tissue patterns from her dressmaking days, the tailor’s dummy standing naked in a corner, a samovar that Helmut purloined from a first-class carriage at the Lehrter Bahnhof, an empty birdcage. Even the musty rankness of the baskets of soiled sheets Clara takes in with the intimate whiff of other people’s secret lives coming off them, seems bracing. Today Clara’s dirty linen seems preferable to the shrouded dust covers of the von Kleists.

  Clara is peppering. The pendulum has swung. She feels the savage fury of the abandoned. Her princess has been taken away from her. She is shut out by those Russian emigrés who have filled her Fräulein up with notions of herself. They treat her, Clara Peuthert, as if she doesn’t exist. Without Clara, the Fräulein would be a nameless little tramp in an asylum. But now, now she answers to their vulgar name for her. Fräulein Anni. Fräulein Anni. Like some music-hall coquette. The little peasant doesn’t even know when she’s being demeaned.

  Clara hears the knock on the door, a loud, imperious rapping on wood. The landlord, Clara thinks, looking for arrears. She settles her dress and pushes back the tangle of hair which clouds her brow. She stumbles to the door and opens it an inch. Through the suspicious slit she sees the Fräulein.

  ‘Clara,’ she says, ‘it’s me.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Clara barks, wedging her good foot in the door.

  ‘Let me in, Clara, please.’

  For a moment, Clara softens. Perhaps it is the urgent appeal in the Fräulein’s voice, or her tense air of anticipation. She looks paler and thinner than at Dalldorf, but her skin has a clear, well-tended look. Her face is shaded by a hat, a gorgeous white plush confection with a black satin brim rolled at the edge and trimmed with two raven’s quills in front. Over her arm a camel-hair coat is draped. She is wearing a mauve satin dress – drop-shoulder, five-piece skirt, Clara notes – which sets off the colour of her eyes, which today seem emphatically blue. She looks the part, Clara thinks, her tenderness suddenly exhausted. They had made her look the part. Sour bile rises in her throat.

  ‘Clara?’

  She opens the door and the Fräulein makes to come in. But Clara grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her back out into the landing, prodding at her satin breast, pulling at the feathers in her hat and finding instead fistfuls of glossy hair.

  ‘Stop it, Clara,’ the Fräulein squeals.

  Clara lifts her hand and swipes the girl across the cheek. Her blood is up; she has been betrayed. How dare she come around here in her fine bought clothes, her silly hat, her puny cries for help?

  ‘You have betrayed me,’ she roars and clouts the Fräulein again, a sharp cuff about the face. She falls, sprawling on a gloomy landing, dust on her dress, her hat flying. How ridiculous she looks, Clara thinks, lying there scrabbling on the stone floor.

  ‘That’s where you belong,’ Clara cries, ‘in the dirt!’

  Clara staggers back and takes one last look at her princess, smeared and bruised and brought down, before she slams the door. Within, she leans against the wood and tries to reclaim her breath. And as her breathing steadies and her rage subsides, she feels cured. Cured of love.

  Fräulein Anni staggered out into the street and started walking. Her cheekbone was stinging and already felt shiny to the touch. She carried her hat in her hand. The white pile was soiled and she had lost one of the feathers in the scuffle with Clara. She wandered aimlessly, patting her throbbing face, and wishing she was not dressed in such a fashion, her finery despoiled. A tram droned past and stopped and on an impulse she boarded it, not even bothering to check its destination on the front. She wanted to put as much distance as was possible between Clara and herself. She sat in a daze, nursing her flaming cheek and her hurt pride. She took no notice of where she was going. The only sensation she was aware of was a queasy humiliation. When the tram stopped at Invalidenstraβe, she got off for no other reason than the motion of the tram was beginning to make her feel sick.

  Invalidenstraβe. It rings a bell; no, the tram rings a bell and leaves her standing there. It is her street, the street of invalids.

  ‘Franziska?’ a small voice says wonderingly. ‘Is that you? Is that really you?’

  A blonde young woman is standing on the kerb. Obviously a shopgirl or somesuch, but despite that, she is smartly dressed. A hat of cornflower blue with yellow flowers, a dark blue suit with black lace and red braid and buffalo-horn buttons. She has begun to take notice of what people wear; it matters.

  ‘Franziska?’ the voice persists and for the first time she realises the woman is addressing her.

  ‘It is you!’

  Suddenly she is enveloped in a coiffed embrace. Sticky hair, cheap perfume. She clutches her hat and hopes the mistake can be sorted out quickly without a public scene on the street. The young woman steps backwards.

  ‘My, how well you look! You’ve certainly come up in the world since we last saw you!’

  She fingers the lapels of the camel coat.

  ‘Are you staying in Berlin? Oh, come home, that’s where I’m going now. You must meet Mother. She will be impressed. Just look at you!’

  The young woman takes her gloved hand and, putting her face up close, says earnestly, ‘It’s Doris, you do remember, Doris, Doris Wingender.’

  She n
ods. She wants to please the young woman, who is pretty and winning and obviously in need of a friend. She has a terrible urge to confide in her, though she does not know why. She wants to tell this complete stranger how she is being held against her will by people who think she is someone else. Perhaps it is this woman’s easy familiarity, the presumption she has made of friendship, or the blows inflicted by Clara? Clara, Clara, what will she do without her? Clara, the only one who really knows her.

  ‘Franziska?’ the chatty young woman says again. There is something insistent and demanding in the way she says the name. A more urgent instinct than the need to confide takes over. Flight. She hears the approach of another tram, wheezing to a stop by the kerb. She pulls her hand away and clambers on as the tram is pulling off. The young woman stands on the kerb, shocked, rejected, baffled.

  ‘Sissy,’ she is calling. ‘Sissy!’

  It is Herr Franz Jaenicke, an acquaintance of the von Kleists, who rescues Fräulein Anni. Strolling through the Tiergarten he spots her, standing on an ornamental wooden bridge that spans a green lake. Weeping willows trail in the water, lily fronds carpet the still surface. He is one of several friends the frantic von Kleists have called upon to scour the city for the fugitive princess. So-called, Herr Jaenicke thinks. Baron von Kleist was out of his mind with worry. When Herr Jaenicke was summoned to the apartment on Nettelbeckstraße, the baron was pacing up and down the drawing room, smoothing the quicks on his worried fingers.

  ‘I have been entrusted with the Grand Duchess Anastasia, and you,’ he pointed a finger at his wife, Maria, and daughter, Gerda, ‘you have managed to go one better than the Bolsheviks. You have managed to lose her.’